Under His Skin
by EllieF
Summary: It felt like nothing between them had changed, at first.


Five years, and Matt had barely changed. The same goggles Mello had once made fun of, the same big gloves, the same stripes. And it felt like nothing between them had changed, either, at first. Matt jumped right into setting up his machines, grabbing surveillance feeds, bitching about the price of cigarettes in LA. Mello hardly needed to tell him what to do before he was doing it.

He'd never told him to do housework, having developed a high tolerance for clutter and grime out of necessity, but when he went to the kitchen for his afternoon coffee, Matt was running hot water into the sink piled with dishes.

"You're my maid now?" It didn't matter that Mello had a vested interest in Matt doing the housework. He really couldn't help pushing. Maybe he wanted to see if things were really the same: if they could take it. Or maybe he was just getting to be a bastard in his old age.

"Hey, if you wanna do these, I won't stop you."

Mello crossed his arms and settled his weight against the doorframe.

"Ha. Have you ever washed a dish in your life?"

"Nope," Mello lied, cheerfully.

Matt shook his head, grinning, and rolled up his sleeves, revealing for the first time the tribal designs inked around both his arms.

"Hold up," Mello said. He went over to the sink and caught one of Matt's wrists, pushed the shirtsleeve up. The tattoo reached all the way along Matt's upper arm. "How far do those go?"

Back at Wammy's, Mello had never thought anything of ruffling Matt's hair or tussling with him over a book or his GameBoy. But now, Matt's eyes widened when Mello touched him, and he pulled his arm away. "All the way," he said.

Sure, it had been five years, but Matt _really_ should've remembered that one way to make Mello insatiably curious about something was to be reluctant to talk about it. "All right, be like that." He'd wait until later and catch Matt off-guard.

He got his chance that evening, when Matt was sitting on the couch that sagged in the middle, playing a game, of course. Mello stepped up behind him and pulled down the neck of the shirt.

"Hey!" He'd never seen Matt move so fast. He was up off the couch before Mello had caught any more than that the tattoo did, indeed, reach up to his shoulders.

"I'm not _allowed_ to see it?" Mello demanded.

Matt looked sulky and didn't answer.

"Why the fuck not?"

"It's personal," Matt muttered.

"What, you were never going to take your shirt off in front of anyone?"

"I never thought _you'd_ see it," Matt snapped.

Oh, that was even more intriguing. "You've got to show me now."

Matt grabbed his cigarettes from the coffee table and lit one, his classic stall for time. "Fine."

Mello went around the couch to him, and tugged the shirt out of the way more carefully this time. The black-ink stripes came up onto Matt's shoulders from the front and crossed at the back of his neck, the points forming a stylized M. _Oh._ "You could've said it was _your_ initial." He traced a finger lightly over it before letting go of the shirt.

Matt didn't look at him. "Would you have bought it?"

"Not for a second."

"So why bother, yeah?" Matt glanced back now, a strange half-smile on his face.

"When did you get it?"

"My fifteenth birthday."

"Do you wish you hadn't?"

"I dunno. Not very often."

Mello gave a short laugh. "Fair enough." He took hold of Matt's shoulders to turn him round, and didn't let go once he had. He couldn't repay Matt's faith in him, not yet, not with so much still to be done to free the world from Kira. Matt met his eyes, and Mello thought he understood that. Hell, he'd probably known it all along. "It looks good on you."

"I've felt it there since I was ten. Just, now, everyone can see it."

"I know," Mello said, quietly. "I never asked you to."

"_I_ know that." There was that strangely sad half-smile again. "It wasn't really a choice."

Mello gripped Matt's shoulders harder. "_This_ is a choice. I don't want you in it if it isn't."

"It's the only right choice." A real smile, now. "Did you think I was gonna let you save the world all by yourself?"

Mello let his hands fall. "Heh, no. And I wouldn't let anyone help me but you."


End file.
